Key Takeaways
I can relate to anyone in my free 30-Day PCOS Diet Challenge who doesn’t want to give up ice cream. Before I got serious about PCOS, I was a heavy-hitting ice cream aficionado too.
If you’re managing your PCOS with dietary interventions, but you still want to enjoy ice cream, then I have just what you need. Below you’ll find some great PCOS-friendly ice cream recipes from my PCOS Meal Planner. I’ve also selected some of the best store brands for you too.
What Makes an Ice Cream PCOS-Friendly?
As much as I wish it were so, ice cream isn’t a healthy food.
When choosing products (or recipes), it’s all about what’s NOT included that makes an ice cream PCOS-friendly.
The most important requirement is that the ice cream is dairy-free. As I explain in my article on PCOS and dairy, it’s not just lactose that’s a problem. You also want to avoid dairy proteins too and that means cream.
The other major consideration is sugar-content. Sugar is at the top of the list of foods to avoid with PCOS. Participants from my free 30-Day PCOS Diet Challenge see for themselves the effects of cutting back on sugar. Long story short, the less sugar you eat, the better.
The last thing I look at when comparing different ice creams is all the other ingredients. Vegetable oils, food additives, and things that we can’t recognize as food. The long-term health hazards are often poorly quantified. What’s more, as the examples I share below prove, they’re also not needed to make a delicious product.
Summary
People with PCOS should choose dairy-free ice creams. Preference should be given to products with lower sugar content and fewer additives.
3 PCOS-Friendly Ice Cream Store Brands
So, which ice cream is good for PCOS? Fronen, O’My! and So Delicious are three good PCOS ice cream brands. These products meet the requirements described above.
Fronen
Fronen makes some of the best ice creams for PCOS. Their products have the fewest ingredients. None of these are additives and all you’ll recognize as whole foods. For example, their chocolate dessert contains only coconut cream, water, honey, and cocoa powder. With 13 grams of sugar per 3.5 oz (100 gram) serving this ice cream is also relatively low in sugar.
O’My!
O’My! also make some nice PCOS-friendly ice cream products. I like that they use organic coconut cream and also minimize ingredients. Their ice cream is sweetened with sugar, which isn’t awesome. But at 17 grams per 100-gram serving, it’s not all that much higher than Fronen.
So Delicious
So Delicious is a big brand in dairy-free foods. I’m hesitant to recommend their entire range of frozen desserts because they generally contain too much sugar. But products, like their vanilla bean coconut milk frozen dessert, are comparable to O’My! They also offer low-sugar desserts with less than 4 grams per 100-gram serving. That can be helpful if you’re struggling with insulin resistance. Just be aware that their low-sugar products use erythritol, and monk fruit extract as sweeteners. As far as non-nutritive sweeteners go, these are among the better ones. But they’re not really whole foods. So Delicious frozen desserts also include more additives than Fronen or O’My!
Summary
Fronen, O’My!, and So Delicious are good examples of PCOS ice cream brands.
PCOS-Friendly Ice Cream Recipes
Making your own PCOS-friendly ice cream is the best way to control the ingredients. You’ll find many dairy-free, low-sugar recipes to choose from. This Chai Tea Frozen Yogurt is a nice one to start with. The two recipes below from my PCOS meal planner are also very popular.
Banana-Berry Soft Serve Recipe – Serves 2
Ingredients
- 1 ½ Bananas (cut and frozen into small chunks)
- ½ cup Frozen strawberries
- 4 tbsp Coconut cream
- ½ tsp Vanilla extract
Instructions
- Using a food processor or high-powered blender, process all the ingredients for a minute or two until smooth and creamy.
Chocolate Ice Cream – Serves 2
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cup Coconut cream
- 1 tbsp Cacao powder
- 1 tsp Stevia or Monkfruit 1:1 sugar substitute
- 1 tsp Ceylon cinnamon powder
- 1 pinch Salt
Instructions
- Stir all the ingredients together until the mixture resembles a thick mousse.
- Drizzle in a tablespoon of coconut oil at the end. This will freeze and become like chocolate chips.
- Place in the freezer for a couple of hours before serving.
Summary
From a nutrition perspective, making your own ice cream is best. You get to choose the ingredients and you can ensure the sugar content is right for you.
Author
As a Nutritionist, I’m continuing my mission to help women like you, beat PCOS. Evidence-based diet and lifestyle interventions helped me overcome five years of infertility. I fell pregnant naturally after multiple failed IVF cycles. Along the way, my other PCOS symptoms went away too. This experience taught me how to combine the latest science with a pragmatic approach to habit change. I’ve now helped thousands of other women achieve life-changing results, and I love for you to be the next PCOS success story. Learn more about me and what I do here.
As a Nutritionist, I’m continuing my mission to help women like you, beat PCOS. Evidence-based diet and lifestyle interventions helped me overcome five years of infertility. I fell pregnant naturally after multiple failed IVF cycles. Along the way, my other PCOS symptoms went away too. This experience taught me how to combine the latest science with a pragmatic approach to habit change. I’ve now helped thousands of other women achieve life-changing results, and I love for you to be the next PCOS success story. Learn more about me and what I do here.
